Lobe construction and sand/mud segregation by turbidity currents and debris flows on the western Nile deep-sea fan (Eastern Mediterranean)

Based on an unusual data set comprises bathymetric data, backscatter imagery, seismic-reflection and Chirp profiles, and sediment cores, the Late Quaternary lobe at the mouth of the youngest turbidite channel off the western Nile deep-sea fan was investigated. The large-scale construction of the lobe through time and space is mainly controlled by 1) a pre-existing topography inherited from the downslope movement of Messinian evaporites, and 2) the type and nature of gravity flows delivered to the basin floor. The margins of the lobe are defined by high-backscatter acoustic facies that contrasts strongly with the low-backscatter fades from the surrounding abyssal-plain deposits. Within the lobe, low-backscatter facies characterise the main channel-levee systems and lobate bodies immediately beyond the end of the channels. Cores reveal that the high-backscatter facies corresponds to a series of extensive but thin debris-flow deposits with a fingered margin. These debrites comprise a muddy-sand matrix and dispersed clasts with diameter of 5 to 10 cm. The lower backscatter facies at channel mouths corresponds to alternations of thin sandy turbidites and muddy hemipelagites. Extensive thin debris flows therefore traversed surprisingly low gradients to reach the distal fringes of the lobe complex but are never found in the lobate bodies just beyond the channel mouths. Although the Nile deep-sea fan is considered as a silt/mud-rich accumulation, sand-prone deposits exist within the lobe. This sand/mud segregation results either from the presence of channelized features in the lobe and/or from the hydrodynamic process of particle transport by debris flows and turbulent flows. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.